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Comment by sandGorgon | Hacker News Reader

Copy paste, printing and networking. Biggest usability misses of Linux.

I don't consider these technical issues...but usability issues. Things like insisting on keeping the install ISO at 750 mb, leaves seamless driver support out of the todo list because...hey, there are no drivers anyway.

I'm really surprised there is not a paid version of Linux with these features baked in. I would GLADLY pay for all these (as well as the royalties for mp3,flash, etc)

EDIT: does anyone know if systemd-networkd would make things better [1]

[1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Systemd-networkd

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Why is copy-paste broken? I never had issues.

I don't have issues anymore with printing and networking. I understand that this stuff is per vendor so I usually do my research before buying (I have thinkpads, and my printers are all pretty friendly). I do see many windows computer fall over when printers connect to new wireless networks, though.

As for mp3, flash, isn't is as simple as enabling a non-free repository and let it do its thing? If you use Ubuntu the option to enable that is right at the installer. I've never had the issue since I switched to Linux full time (11.04)

In X, you have N selections referenced by atom. Two atoms (PRIMARY and CLIPBOARD) are sometimes used interchangeably by various software, leading to all sorts of shenanigans where for example selecting then middle clicking pastes something that was "Ctrl+Ced" elsewhere or vice versa.

Additionally, X selections aren't buffers - they're handles used asynchronously. So, when you paste, if the source application is dead or has mis-handled its state internally, you don't get what you expect.

These behaviors are patched over by clipboard managers which manage PRIMARY and CLIPBOARD interactions and which immediately copy the selection into a buffer to make it long-lived. However, each desktop environment's clipboard manager has gradually expanded to include all kinds of strange environment-specific metadata possibilities (to enable, i.e. "Paste Special" options from a spreadsheet).

This has some nice little side effects, like I can use the highlight -> middle-click action to get around JS in the browser that is triggered on copying text.

Not that I'm a fan of the situation, Keepass2/Mono break my routine everyday.

> Why is copy-paste broken? I never had issues.

Different programs use different conventions. For example, shift+insert does not do the same thing in say, xterm and firefox.

Interesting. I only noticed now that shift-insert in Firefox doesn't use PRIMARY but CLIPBOARD. I'm so used to middle mouse button paste that I never noticed. This is probably due to Firefox not using a native graphical toolkit.

Don't they use Gtk2 & Cairo?

Chromium is slow to deliver the clipboard too (just containing text), so you press ctrl+v and wait for several seconds.

Chromium and some others take the clipboard with them when the app is Quit, suddenly the clipboad is cleared.

Really? I use chromium on the odd occasion and never have to wait.. nor have I ever noticed the clearing of clipboard..

Depends on the programs you use, and whether or not you're running a full DE or a bare WM. Most programs use Ctrl+X/C/V, Shift+Delete/Shift+Insert/Control+Insert, and/or highlight/middle-click in various unpredictable combinations.

I've found this to be less of a problem in modern desktop environments (especially KDE, in my experience), since most DEs nowadays feature their own clipboard/buffer management.

Huh. Interesting. I only ever use C-x C-c C-v, and then C-Shift-c C-shift-v in my terminal emulator so I never notice these issues.

For me even that's annoying enough. On a mac it's consistently command-x command-c command-v everywhere, whereas in Linux I have to think "oh, I'm in a terminal now, use shift", and if you get it wrong things screw up (e.g. C-shift-v opens the inspector in Firefox if memory serves).

Same here - I didn't know that Linux copy-paste still had problems, but that could be just because of how we're using it.

Sound isn't too great either. The BlueZ developers for example decided to drop HSF/HSP support in BlueZ 5.x [1], which means there is no way to get a bluetooth headset (with a microphone) working on Linux anymore; there's just no way.

Although it's not like sound is great on Windows either.

[1] http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Notes/5....

> Although it's not like sound is great on Windows either.

Pre-Vista I might have agreed with you but now? I think Windows has quite good audio stack.

See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_features_new_to_Wind...

Vista was the first time I suddenly found myself unable to use my headphones on a Windows machine. Sounds was forced to go out through the speakers. I eventually rebooted to fix it.

I feel things are moving backwards.

Your single anectodal evidence of single non-updated driver does not really prove anything about "going backwards" or tell anything about the merit of new audio stack.

The irony of this to me is that I started using Linux back in 1998 or so (though I've used it off and on for the past 15 years, I'm far from an expert, just a hobbyist)

But in 1998, Sound on Linux was almost impossible to get working correctly (that's hyperbole, but it wasn't too far off)

It's gotten better, but not by much. But considering 15 years have gone by, that's faint praise indeed.

I'm just here (on my laptop with speakers that have mysteriously stopped working) to second any comments relating to the sorry state of Linux audio.

It's a good thing my brightness settings are stuck at 100% or I wouldn't be able to upvote this comment.

Does xbacklight work?

My macbook pro (running linux) has a strange issue where I have to run setpci -v -H1 -s 00:01.00 BRIDGE_CONTROL=0 before the backlight works (when using official NVIDIA drivers, nouveau works fine).

My T410 thinkpad required some XOrg.conf setting get the backlight working. It really is strange how bad the NVIDIA drivers are with this backlight stuff.

Apparently the BlueZ team only works on Android now, even though it's no longer shipped with AOSP (or even any phones?)

The reason appears to be that Intel wants Android to work well on their hardware, and the new BlueDroid stack doesn't support any Intel-specific features. Instead of fixing the sketchy (details in article) BlueDroid code, they decided to make BlueZ a drop-in replacement for BlueDroid:

http://lwn.net/Articles/597293/

I haven't had trouble with printing in years- in fact, I can basically print on everything with no configuration, and people with OS X and Windows laptops seem to have lots of problems.

While this is another 'Well, works for me" kind of response, I've never had a problem printing from a laptop with OS X. Windows, yes. But OS X generally just finds the printer and goes, with no configuration necessary at all.

Aren't most Linux distributions still using CUPS, the system OS X uses under the hood?

(More on topic for the actual post here, the last couple of times I've tried to install Linux on a laptop getting wifi going has been a bit finicky, but usually so has getting things like booting into a GUI. I've attributed that less to Linux than to me trying to stick it on obsolete Apple hardware, though.)

As I mentioned, it has less to do with the underlying technology than the effort it takes to tie them together.

Setting up HP WiFi printers is not seamless. In know how to do it (using hp-plugin), but things could have been packaged to work seamlessly.

I was just printing on someone else's computer running barebones Lubuntu. I found that going to localhost:631 (cups web admin) has all the settings needed to add the printer, which came up as "Detected network printers". I think the OSX one has a GUI frontend for that. I just tested the GNOME gui on my laptop, it doesn't seem to detect the printer but localhost:631 does.

That's strange, since GNU/Linux and OS X both (last I checked) use CUPS for printing.

That said, it really depends on what printer(s) you buy. I've had wonderful experiences with HP printers, and tend to recommend them. Brother, Konica Minolta, and Epson printers work reasonably well with some tinkering and research in my experience.

Canon? Godspeed ;)

Is there any sort of certification scheme for CUPS? Given that's the standard for Mac and Linux, I'm surprised companies don't make 'CUPS compliant' printers.

I see a lot of recommendations for Brother printers, but they seem to require quite an involved process to set up.

My Lexmark X4850 begs to differ. No drivers, doesn't work, period. Lexmark doesn't care, and apparently no Linux driver developers have this printer, so no one has made support for it yet.

Lexmark have historically been badly supported in Linux because of their DRM shenanigans and their lack of interest.

Don't buy Lexmark, basically.

Used many wireless printers or scanners?

There are no royalties for Flash. Well, apart from the yearly cap that Adobe pays.

Similarly, Fluendo have been paying the cap for MP3 decoding since 2005 on their open source decoder for Linux.

(MP3 decode should now be out of patent, as should most encode tasks but "intellectual property" likes to keep its boundary lines as vague as possible so you never know if you're trespassing and just pay out of fear/habit.)

Printing has also been pretty good for a while, so much so that Apple adopted the same solution in 2002.

Are you sure your complaints are still valid?

I have only used Linux for the last 12 years. I use a thinkpad in an office full of macs and HP printers and 5ghz networks.

None of it works as seamlessly as on a Mac. I'm pretty comfortable compiling my custom kernels, so I'm more than the average Joe trying to setup networking.

There is still a reason why every Linux install asks you to explicitly select that you want mp3 codecs insralled. Flash is not installed by default. I don't know what the legal reasons are, but I'm willing to pay my share to not having to deal with it.

"There is still a reason why every Linux install asks you to explicitly select that you want mp3 codecs insralled." Ubuntu is the only installer I know of that does this...

Mint does to, IIRC.

They use the same (or an extremely similar) installer last I checked.

> Copy paste, printing and networking. Biggest usability misses of Linux.

Hah. 5 years ago I switched my desktop from Linux to Windows because copy-paste suddenly stopped working. Suddenly it became impossible to copy an URL link from the terminal into FF's address bar. Then I said to myself I didn't have time for this s*t. I've never looked back after switching.

> Copy paste

Out of curiosity, what do you feel is bad about copy-pasting under linux? It's inconsistent, but it's still the best copy-paste functionality I've experienced so far on any operating system. It'd be nice if all applications understood the dual clipboard, and if terminal applications behaved a bit better, but still.. by far the best of any OS as far as I'm concerned.

Inconsistency - again this is not about Ctrl c but rather some (any) consistency.

I truly envy the OSX guys, their consistency

P.S. google for IBM CUA . Linux is supposed to follow it, but doesn't. Macvim is more consistent than gvim !

Every time I use OSX or Windows I catch myself marking a portion of text and trying to paste with middle mouse button.

good point. Except... all new laptops are coming without a middle mouse button.

This is the trend in all the latest Thinkpads as well a lot of other computers (I know of Asus and Acer as well).

If you don't feel like doing the research to make sure that your hardware will work correctly under Linux, you can buy a computer with Linux pre-installed.

Which is to say, you know, the one Dell laptop and the System76 behemoths. So, yeah, two options out of ... thousands.

And, research or not, _no_ hardware really, fully supports linux (or, vice-versa). Which is sort of the point of this whole thread.

Zareason is the bees knees: http://zareason.com/shop/UltraLap-440.html

They'll ship with the distro of your choice preinstalled, and I've had wonderful experience with their support (where they suggested a kernel upgrade for me a few versions higher than what was shipping with my preferred distro.) Every model except the UltraLap comes with a mini-screwdriver and encouragement to use it. The UltraLap is their competition with 'ultrabooks' though, so it's not put together as nicely as the others - no screwdriver there:(

They just test everything, and only send you stuff that works.

Awesome, did not know about them. Thanks!

there's a bunch of sources nowadays.

http://linuxpreloaded.com/

You completely forgot the many GPU issues that still exist.

Concerning networkd, I don't think so. It's mostly geared towards (and I believe even originating from) CoreOS, and environments similar to it. Mostly for managing network devices in containers and virtualized deployments. Red Hat's been sponsoring Project Atomic recently.

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